Not bad for a medical student and part-time runner
One of the more common ideas in motivation is what some people call the Bannister effect. For decades, once people began keeping records, it was thought to be impossible to run a mile in under four minutes, until Roger Bannister did it at on a windy spring day at Oxford on May 6, 1954. Two months later, he raced his great rival John Landy of Australia and won that race, with both men going under four minutes, and within three years 16 runners had gone under the barrier.
The moral of the story, of course, is that so often our limitations exist only in our minds, and when someone erases the mental limits, performance takes off. It’s also a testament to the power of belief, because Bannister’s belief is seen as the magic key that unlocked the sacred door.
It’s a great story and a powerful moral, except that, as in much of real life, reality is a bit more complicated.
There’s a scene in the movie Moneyball that wonderfully captures one of the most important hidden influences that affects our judgment and decision-making. The Oakland As manager, Billy Beane, is presiding at a meeting in which his scouts are discussing prospects they like. The discussion is heavy on references to looks, such as “he has a strong jaw”—as if that has any correlation at all to the real question: can he produce runs? Another does not like a prospect because he has an ugly girlfriend; it tells him the player lacks confidence.
This bias is called the halo effect, and it has a powerful influence on the success of your persuasive efforts. The halo effect means that we have a tendency to let a judgment of a particular trait affect our judgment of other unrelated traits. For example, attractive individuals also tend to be perceived by others as more competent or likeable.
Because of the halo effect, we may perceive individuals differently depending on the situation, or may perceive the situation differently depending on the individual. For example, here are descriptions of two executives:
If you believe the customer is always right, then sales can be pretty easy. Simply ask them what they want and match your offering to that as closely as possible. It’s easy because the customer does all the work.
But just imagine if parents worked that way. “Hey Dad, Spike and the boys want me to hang out with them Saturday night. Can I have the keys to the liquor cabinet and borrow your Harley?”
Or doctors: “Hey Doc, I’ve had this pain in my chest for the past couple of days, and I feel short of breath. It must be my work stress, so could you prescribe me a few anxiety pills?”
Any doctor that would not probe further and try to get to the root cause of the pain, or did not overrule her patient, would be guilty of malpractice, yet that’s the approach that so many salespeople are taught.
So many jokes start off this way, but have you ever wondered why it’s three, and not two or four?
There is a well-known rule in presentations that good things come in threes. It doesn’t appear to be strongly supported by scientific evidence, but it has been so well woven into the fabric of literature, communication and rhetoric that it’s a good idea to pay attention to it. It’s the curious fact that our minds like ideas in threes. Stories tend to have a situation, conflict and resolution structure. The Declaration of Independence could have listed a lot of unalienable rights, but limited itself to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” We never watched a program called the Four Stooges.
Speech expert Max Atkinson tells us that, “One of the attractions of three-part lists is that they create an impression of completeness.” In fact, his analysis of political speeches showed that three-part lists regularly trigger applause during political presentations. (By the way, where do you think the term claptrap came from?)
Three somehow seems right to our minds. Maybe it’s because of our working memory limitations: there’s only so much we can process in our conscious awareness at one time. Or maybe it’s because three is the perfect number for arriving at a happy medium; like Goldilocks, one bowl of porridge may be too cold, another too hot, but the third is just right. You can use this when presenting alternatives. Henry Kissinger said he always presented Nixon with three alternatives; his favored one was always in the middle and was invariably the one selected.
You may have five reasons why someone should buy your product. Should you tell them all five? Although research shows that it depends on the situation, the short answer is no. When the audience is not that intellectually involved with the situation, then more reasons tend to be better. However, when the audience members are involved and are engaging their central processing, you run the risk that the weaker reasons will dilute the stronger. If they are going to forget some of what you told them, there’s a chance that they will remember the weaker and forget one of the stronger reasons. For example, one of Churchill’s most stirring speeches promised the British people nothing but “blood, toil, tears and sweat”, yet most people remember it as “blood, sweat and tears”.
Sometimes, people tend to overstuff their presentations through lack of confidence. They worry that they might leave out one of the reasons that is important to someone in the audience. I have two answers to that. First, you should know your audience well enough to make sure that does not happen. Second, you can always have those reasons in your backup material in case they come up during the conversation, or in case the top three you chose need reinforcement. (I wish I had a third answer, but I don’t. It just goes to show, you don’t have to take this rule to extremes.)
